"Alfred Jarry's Ubu Roi premiered in Paris in 1896. The play, about a would-be king at once cowardly and cutthroat, parodied the nobility of Shakespearean tragedy and commenced with a cry of 'Merde!,' Jarry's native tongue for 'shit.' A riot resulted (sadly, a rare occurrence in contemporary American theater) and Jarry and company were shut down by The Man (or, 'le homme'). Bloody but unbowed, Jarry migrated to a puppet theater. A decade later, the revolutionary succumbed to alcoholism and tuberculosis."
1 comment:
I really wish I had gotten a chance to see this adaptation of this show. I've never seen this show but I've read about it and its one of the few plays that I have read about and become interested in. I love surrealism and I really like the band Pere Ubu who got their name from this show however I heard of the band after the play. It's also interesting that this play is being done by puppets it seems like puppets are used to make shows funnier or to be used when humans can't be used for some reason. I wonder why they decided to do a puppet adaptation of this show...
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